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Leslie Moskovits, 32, says that "when you work on a farm that respects the environment, you see your impact on the earth in a very real way." (Laura Kane / Toronto Star)

Tarrah Young, 35, has been farming for a decade and runs the Green Being Farm with her partner in Neustadt, Ont. They raise Berkshire pigs, Red Poll cattle and Ameraucauna hens on their 20-hectare plot. (Laura Kane / Toronto Star)

Just a few years ago, her dirt-free fingernails were tapping on a keyboard, writing papers on sustainability at the University of Toronto. She seemed destined to work at a non-governmental organization or the Ministry of Environment.

Almost on a whim, she signed up for a farming internship in rural Ontario and, suddenly, she couldn’t imagine writing another essay.

“I saw that something was wrong with the world, but I didn’t want to push paper around trying to change it,” she said. “When you work on a farm that respects the environment, you see your impact on the earth in a very real way.”

Now a proud owner of a 38-hectare vegetable farm in Neustadt, Ont., she finally feels she’s saving the earth from the ground up, caterpillars and all.

Moskovits, a 32-year-old born and raised in Toronto, is one of a growing number of young, educated women fleeing city life to farm sustainably in rural Ontario.

A survey by the training program FarmStart found a majority of its interns were raised in the city or suburbs, and 71 per cent were university educated.

Melissa Watkins, FarmStart’s program director, said a majority of its interns were female, too.

“The most successful farms I know are run by young women. Many of them are very entrepreneurial and business minded,” she said.

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It’s part of a demographic shift in Ontario’s agriculture industry that has been underway for decades.

Traditionally, farming was a job passed down over generations. But in the 1980s, high interest rates and low crop prices pushed many young people off family farms, said Mark Wales, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.

Between 1991 and 2011, the province lost nearly 70 per cent of its farmers under 35. The only demographic that grew was farmers over 55.

At 57, Wales represents the average age of Ontario’s farmers.

Some call it a provincial crisis. Wales doesn’t quite agree, pointing out that new immigrants are also increasingly filling the gap. But he says more young people are needed to sustain the industry.

He added farming is not a career often promoted in high schools or universities.

“We would like to retire someday, and we need a new generation to replace us,” he said.

But that new generation doesn’t only look different, they have different ideas about how to farm, too.

Just five minutes down the dirt road from Moskovits’s farm, 35-year-old Tarrah Young raises Berkshire pigs, Red Poll cattle and Ameracauna hens on her 20-hectare plot.

Young was born in Kitchener, and like Moskovits, had no experience with rural life before she decided to farm.

“It opened my eyes to the idea that a person from an urban background could choose farming as a career. That had never occurred to me before,” she said.

Both Young and Moskovits sell organic vegetables using a community-supported agriculture model. Local families buy in at the start of the season and receive farm-fresh fruits and vegetables every week.

“It’s a great feeling to sell directly to people that are eating your food,” said Moskovits. “Marketing locally also means you aren’t shipping great distances and wasting energy.”

It’s also a model that is relatively drought proof. Since members have already paid, they, too, bear the burden when harvests are low.

Members have the right to ask for a refund, but that hasn’t happened yet, Moskovits says. “Your members support you even during hard times. That’s the whole point.”

Still, for many young farmers, Ontario’s severe drought this year means the worst harvest they’ve ever seen.

Young must sell some cattle because her grass isn’t growing fast enough to feed them. Moskovits, now relying on a near-dry pond for water, can only pray for rain.

They persevere out of passion for what they do. Both run internship programs on their own land, offering room, board and a living stipend in exchange for labour.

But even if more young women want to become farmers, it’s a tough industry to crack. The high start-up costs, even for a small plot of land, are a major barrier.

Young’s land cost $340,000, plus she has the expense of costly equipment and infrastructure. She saved the money over five years with her partner, Nathan Carey. They pay the mortgage through the farm profits.

“It’s a near impossibility for a young person to start a farm,” she said. Walking into a bank and telling them you want to start an organic farm doesn’t yield great results, either. “We are a risky bunch.”

But it’s on the business side is where city folks may have the upper hand, Young said.

“In the city, you need to build a network to survive. You just have a bigger collection of people you know.

“Like when I had to sell my pigs for the first time, I just emailed every person I knew and it worked out perfectly,” she said.

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